


There's No Soup Faerie in Faerieland

by orphan_account



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, everyone wants to get into derek's pants, love spell gone hilariously wrong
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-22
Updated: 2012-07-23
Packaged: 2017-11-10 10:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/465474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek's been hit by a love spell, bewitching anyone who lays eyes on him to fall into lust. It might be entirely Scott and Stiles' fault. No, scratch that, it's entirely Scott and Stiles' fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

Derek barges into Stiles’ life and he is, unsurprisingly, unrepentant for dragging him into a life fraught with danger. It’s not just the ‘please don’t tell my dad’ kind—although there’s plenty of that—but the kind of danger that no sixteen year old kid would ever want to find themselves in, involving guns, crossbows, and many different and creatively bloody ways to be maimed.

Not to mention the accomplice to murder. All Stiles did is throw a Molotov cocktail at Peter Hale while Derek delivered the killing blow, but he participated. He helped Derek kill his uncle and if his dad ever heard about that, it’d be the biggest grounding session that Stiles has ever seen. In jail.

And yet.

Whenever Derek seems to get into a sticky situation, Stiles is always there with him. He figures that if he had to go through any of this alone, he’d freak, so Derek better appreciate the fact that he’s tagged along in these cases. He tells Derek this and is met with a blank, disbelieving stare.

“You’re the one that got us into this mess in the first place!” Derek exclaims from where he’s wrapped securely to the base of a tree with thick vines.

Stiles, in a similar state as Derek but with the inclusion of an urgent bladder situation, stares at him and says, “You were the one that had to commune with faeries.”

“Because you and Scott had to go and poke around in their homes!”

Well, Stiles had just thought they were very elaborate birdhouses out in the middle of the forest. He and Scott hadn’t actually realized that they’ve wandered in through some faerie portal and entered into some sort of hidden rip in reality where tiny sparkly people with wings fluttered about. Said tiny sparkly people with wings are actually quite terrifying when defending their homes and Stiles had made a run for it. Scott wolfed out and tried to fight, but was caught like the dumbass he is, leaving Stiles to go get backup.

Stiles had been all about being a super secret spy and bust Scott out from faerie jail right from under their noses, but Derek had snarled him into submission and decided to go have a conference. Stiles tagged along because, dude, his best bud is in danger. He can’t leave Scott behind! He might end up sparkling if he stayed with them too long. He probably shouldn’t have snarked at the head faerie dude, which is why he and Derek are bound to trees.

Mouth: on. Brain: off.

“You would too if you saw them.”

Derek gives a frustrated sigh. “I did see them.”

“See? You totally wanted to check them out! The whole place was super cool, it looked like a tiny Lothlórien, Golden Woods and all that!”

Derek’s stare becomes a glare, probably because he doesn’t appreciate the greatness that is Tolkien.

“Whatever, dude,” Stiles says with a roll of his eyes. “I don’t have time to be a squidward all day like you. Do you think they’ll let us out soon? I really have to pee.”

==

The faeries are not happy with Stiles or Scott, but when Stiles really can’t keep his bladder from exploding like a ready grenade, the faeries had hastily cut him free and he had the best whizz of his life behind a giant bush.

“Gross,” Scott says when Stiles reappears, wrinkling his nose.

“My bladder is a precious organ and I would rather it not explode inside me.” 

The faeries roll their eyes collectively and one of them waves a hand, emitting some sort of shining pink aura and Scott stops trying to make an impression of Derek’s sour face. Derek, however, is still making his sour face expression.

“You trespass onto our land!” shrieks the tiny faerie king. He’s about six inches tall with shaggy white hair and a funky leaf outfit. He kind of looks like a forest hobo, but with pink wings and shimmering skin and he’s hovering in front of Derek’s face like he has no fear of being eaten alive.

“We had meant you no harm,” Derek reasons. “They were only curious and they didn’t know. They’ve never stepped through a faerie ring before and they’ve never seen faeries either. They’re still young, forgive them. I am here to retrieve them and to ask for mercy.”

The faerie king glares. “Your youngling attacked us!”

Derek glares at Scott, who glares back. “He’s a cripple. In his head. Forgive him for his slights. He was probably startled, which was why he attacked.”

The faerie king’s glittering intensifies for a moment and then dies down to normal levels. “Very well, for the stupid one, he is free to go. But the human remains!”

Stiles sputters and is about to talk when Derek cuts him off. “He’s done nothing wrong.”

“He defecated on our lands!”

“I did not!” Stiles argues and the look Derek sends him makes him want to run far, far away. If Stiles didn’t know any better, he’d think Derek’s some kind of manic, brooding serial killer. He wisely shuts up.

“He is a human! He is not wolf, like you. I see no reason why he cannot stay to pay for his crimes,” the faerie king says, waving his hands around dramatically. The rest of the faeries congregated around them all nod simultaneously. It’s almost kind of creepy, how they’re so in sync. “It is decided! The human will stay!”

Stiles does not at all want to stay, but neither does he think his bladder would have held on for this long at all. He’s about to argue his case, but this time, his brain is on and wisely doesn’t let him open his mouth to stick his foot further in. He’s glad he didn’t, because Derek growls, the deep menacing sound of an Alpha werewolf that gets every single hair on Stiles’ body to stand on end. The faeries don’t even twitch at the sound, but look at Derek disapprovingly.

“He does not stay.”

“Then he will learn nothing from this lesson!”

“I will reprove him myself,” Derek says firmly. “He does not stay.”

The faerie king stares at Derek, arms crossed over his tiny, yet very chiseled chest. “Is he important to you?”

Derek glances at Stiles then, expression strange. It makes Stiles’ gut lurch and he’s not even hungry. Actually, he might be. He can definitely go for some pizza right about now; he’s been stuck in faerieland for four hours and he’s fairly certain there’s no kindly Soup Faerie that lives here to dole out helpful servings of food to those in need.

“Yes,” Derek says finally, looking away and back to the faerie king. “He’s pack.”

The faerie king studies Derek for a long moment and then stares at Stiles. His pink wings flicker to blue and then to red and then back to pink and the rest of the faeries mimic him. It feels weirdly like a decision has been made without any verbal communication to Stiles, but what does he know about faeries? Absolutely nothing.

“Fine!” the faerie king snaps, waving his arms around in the air, a strange purple aura surrounding his fingers. “Then you will take responsibility, wolf! Let’s see how important you are to him.”

==

The moment they get back to Derek’s hovel of a home, there’s an excited clamor from everyone who wants the rundown on what happened.

“Did Scott become a faerie?” Erica sneers.

“Did Derek become a faerie?” Boyd asks.

“Why are they faeries?” Isaac asks with a confused frown. Erica pats his head like he’s an adorable little fluffball, which he kind of is, personality flaws notwithstanding.

“I am sorry to disappoint everyone with the tragic news, but none of us are faeries and neither will we ever be,” Stiles declares. He looks around the barren kitchen of Derek’s in dismay. “Why is there no food? Why is there no pizza? How are any of you people living?” His stomach agrees with him loudly.

Erica rolls her eyes and then stiffens, going rigidly still in the motion of reaching for her cell phone in her pocket, most likely to call for some pizza delivery—bless her evil, blackened soul. Boyd and Isaac do the same, frozen in whatever position they were in when Derek steps into the house, trailed by Scott who’s looking like a chastised puppy. An angry chastised puppy, but a puppy nonetheless. It’s his signature look, the look that manages to get him out of trouble half the time and what gets him in trouble the other half. Stiles knows this from experience.

Derek glances around at them, brows lowered into a deep frown, making him vaguely resemble a Cro-Magnon come to life. He growls, deep and threatening, and it snaps everyone from their strange moment as live statues.

“Derek,” Erica coos, elbowing Stiles out of the way to get to tall, dark, and broody. “Did you know that you have lovely eyes?”

“Go away,” Isaac says to Erica, pushing her out of the way, but stumbles into Boyd who seems very much like a giant wall all of a sudden. Stiles watches in horrified fascination as Boyd leans forward into Derek’s space, face blank as a slate, and jeez, Stiles can literally see Derek’s hackles being raised and blood is going to be shed because Derek’s fine with poaching into someone else’s personal space, but when it’s the other way around he’s a crazy hermit—

Boyd kisses Derek.

“Holy macaroni,” Stiles breathes. Scott makes a high pitched scandalized noise and Erica and Isaac both howl viciously.

Derek grabs Boyd by his collar and flings him into Erica and Isaac, landing them into a giant tangle of bodies and limbs. His eyes are glowing red and his teeth are starting to go sharp and pointy, like he’s just about ready to wolf out.

“What,” he grits out between his teeth. “Is going on.”

Unfortunately, no one’s paying him any attention, since Isaac and Erica are too busy smacking Boyd around, or rather Erica is smacking Boyd around and Isaac is glaring at him like he could incinerate Boyd on the spot.

Derek roars and Stiles almost jumps backwards at the force of it.

“You’re so…manly when you do that,” Erica coos seductively from where she has Boyd in a headlock. Boyd easily throws her off, snarling at her with bared teeth. Isaac whimpers.

“It’s okay,” Isaac says, eyes wide. “It’s okay if you do it. I don’t mind. I like it.”

And that’s when Stiles realizes that those three are fighting each other to get the chance to do the horizontal tango with Derek. He looks over at Scott, whose eyebrows have disappeared into the fluff he calls hair, and then he stares back at Derek, who’s glaring and posturing threateningly at his pack. He knows without a doubt, it’s the fault of those faerie bastards.

“Derek, maybe you should step outside for a moment,” Stiles says and everyone turns to look at him like he’s suggested that Derek throw himself off a cliff. Which he could suggest, since it takes Derek completely out of the equation of this strange little love spell. He’ll file it away for later, just in case. “Just for a minute! Or just get out of their sight. They weren’t like the nuns of Castle Anthrax until you came in.”

“Don’t tell him what to do,” Boyd snaps at Stiles. “If a god wants to stand on earth, let him be.”

That comment seems to frighten Derek enough to get moving. “Stay,” he says with a warning growl and moves upstairs, out of sight despite the whining from the other three.

Like magic, Boyd freezes, eyes going wide and Erica and Isaac both turn to him.

“What the fuck,” Boyd says without any heat in his words. “I don’t know what just happened.” Even though his face tells everyone he knows exactly what just happened. Stiles should totally call him out on his bullshit.

“Oh my god, I feel so unclean,” Isaac whimpers.

“What did you do, Derek?” Erica asks, eyes wide and her pale face several shades even paler than before. She looks around frantically, finally settling on Stiles and Scott. “I can’t—what, that was so weird. What’s going on? What did you do?”

Derek’s voice floats downstairs, steady and quiet; “I don’t know.”

Stiles and Scott exchange a glance because they’re bros and have this wonderful telekinetic bond that acts up when they know they’re guilty of something. “Yeah, well,” Stiles says with a wince. “I think I do.”

==

Scott and Stiles test the theory that Derek’s been turned into some sort of incubus-werewolf where no one but the two of them can resist his magical animal magnetism.

“Can you not say ‘animal magnetism,’ please,” Scott says, a pained look on his face. “From you, it sounds very wrong.”

“Silence, plebian,” Stiles shushes and watches as Derek takes a step into Walmart (save money, live better!) from inside the safety of the Camaro. The automatic glass doors shut behind him and for a moment, it seems that all is calm and Stiles and Scott both watch with bated breath. Another long moment passes by and then suddenly Derek’s racing out of the store like he’s running from death. He probably is, since nipping at his heels is a crowd of people, some still pushing their shopping carts and there’s no distinction between young, old, male, or female.

“Anything supernatural?” Stiles asks Scott.

Scott sticks his head out of the passenger side window and sniffs. “Nope; not that I can smell any. Although I think you should unlock the door. Wait, oh my god, is that our old English teacher?”

Stiles sighs and unlocks it, not really wanting to deal with the wrath of Derek Hale. It’d involve a lot of walls and invasion of personal space and being super grabby, but none of it is the fun kind. Stiles would totally not object to something like that, but alas, the crazy stuff that Derek always ends up involved in takes precedence of happy-happy-fun time.

Derek dives in through the open window, not even bothering with the door. “Go!” He snarls at Stiles, features looking less and less human by the second.

“Gotcha boss,” Stiles squeaks and peals out of the parking lot like a bat out of hell, leaving behind a bunch of confused customers who are probably wallowing in shame of chasing after Derek Hale. Or guilty pleasure. Stiles isn’t going to lie—Derek did have a strangely creepy masculine charm about him. It’s definitely the animal magnetism.

“Can you please stop,” Scott says. “I know you want to say it. It’s very disturbing.”

“Stop reading my mind, Professor. It’s a violation of privacy and not to mention, it’s very disturbing,” Stiles says in reply.

He can practically hear the eye-roll in Scott’s voice. “I don’t know why I put up with you sometimes.”

“I love you too, man.”

That’s when Stiles realizes that the low hum he’s hearing is not actually the hum of the engine, but Derek in the backseat growling, the sound reverberating deep in his chest. Scott squirms in his seat, looking uncomfortable.

“Um,” Stiles says, wondering if he should be fearing for his life sometime in the near future. “What’s wrong?”

Derek blinks and the noise subsides. “You little shits,” he says with a groan, bringing his hand up to pinch at the bridge of his nose. “This is all your fault.”


	2. Chapter 2

Stiles cleans up his room, throws some dirty laundry into the closet, and sets out a spare sleeping bag—the same one that Derek used during the time he stayed over in Stiles’ room that one memorable time when they distinctly distrusted and disliked each other. He supposes that they still each have their own reservations about the other, but Stiles’ feelings towards Derek are no longer the intense ‘Run! Flee! Play dead!’ kind anymore. He’s not sure how Derek feels about him, but he isn’t going to be betting any money on Derek trusting him.

He sighs and unlocks the window to his room, knowing that Derek’s probably going to slip through there like the creeper he is.

It’s not every day that someone he knows just turns into some sort of people-magnet the moment they catch sight of them. Derek’s already like a prickly cactus and if anything else, Stiles figures that this is going to make him even pricklier than he already is because Derek is as awkward as a newborn kitten. With the claws and everything, but minus the cute.

When the clock hits eleven, Stiles having showered and brushed his teeth at ten forty and ten fifty-five respectively, he shuts off the light to his room and crawls into bed. Five minutes later, he hears his dad shutting off the television downstairs, but there’s no creak of the staircase, so he’s not going to sleep just yet.

He feels ridiculously tired, but then again it’s been an eventful day, mostly comprised of saving Derek from his pack and other random strangers that had managed to catch a glimpse of him. The weirdest encounter that Stiles had to save him from was old Mrs. Wales, who lives up to her name and lives across the street from Scott’s. Scott had been laughing too hard to help and Derek had been too mortified to do much else than to stand there and listen as Mrs. Wales talks about what a strapping young man he is and if he knew anything about plumbing, it’s fine if he didn’t, the bedroom is very large and has a spacious bed.

Stiles chuckles to himself at the memory.

“I’m glad to know you’re having so much fun at my expense,” a low voice growls from the windowsill.

“Nice to know you’re still alive,” Stiles mutters into his pillow, not bothering to open his eyes. He’s comfortable exactly where he is, thanks.

He hears movement and then the shuffling of the sleeping bag on the floor as Derek got comfortable.

“Have you been successful with finding entry into faerieland again?” Stiles asks, even though he knows the answer. Derek wouldn’t be here if he did; he’d be back wherever he stayed the night at, either skulking about in the old, burnt out husk of his family home or that warehouse place on the other side of town.

“They’ve completely closed themselves off,” Derek says and he sounds so miserable, it gets Stiles to open his eyes.

Derek is under the sleeping bag, a bundle of outerwear plopped at Stiles’ desk, and Stiles wonders how he’s used to Derek just stripping in his near vicinity. Maybe because Derek once tried to force him to cut off an arm, and not just anyone’s arm, Derek’s own arm, holy fudgesicles on a stick, while it’s still attached to him. He can’t stare at Derek’s naked arms without flashing back to that night. The top of Derek’s hair is peeking out from under the sleeping bag and he’s turned away from Stiles. It’s a good thing because Stiles isn’t sure if he can school his facial expression into something more neutral.

He sighs and punches his pillow and tries to not think about Derek’s arms and how his muscles have muscles.

“I don’t get it,” Stiles says and Derek turns around to face him, eyes dark and murky. “Why aren’t you jumping for joy about this? Everyone that sees you wants to plow you to Uranus and back—no pun intended. I would have thought that you’d, I don’t know, take advantage of this or something. But instead, you’re here.”

Derek sighs, a quiet exhale in the night. “Why would I want to do that?”

Stiles shrugs. If he was the one hit with the faerie curse, he’d probably be living it up as much as he can, such as trying to ask Lydia out without her looking at him like he’s gum stuck to the bottom of her shoe. She’d say yes and then they’d have the most fabulous dates ever and, oh, right, the moment she goes home and can’t see him anymore, she’d more than likely freak out and never want to see him again ever. And he’d just totally hate it if Jackson’s going to start fawning over him. Actually, no, he’d milk it for all it’s worth until the curse is broken and then Jackson comes back to break his nose.

But he understands; the people that see Derek can’t hold themselves back. They’re possessed by something to go after him and if he did choose to take advantage of the curse, it’d be equivalent of rape.

“I guess you are a good person,” Stiles says.

Derek huffs in mock affront.

“How come Scott and I aren’t affected by the curse?”

Derek’s face does something strange and Stiles realizes he’s looking embarrassed. It’d almost be cute if Derek isn’t well out of childhood and has a perpetual five o’ clock shadow attached to his jaw.

“That’s because you and Scott are already in love,” Derek says.

“Ew, I hope not,” Stiles shoots back.

Some of the tension drains out of Derek’s body at that and he rolls his eyes. “Not with each other, dumbass. But there’s someone else that you’re looking at and not me. That’s why. I figured it out when I ran into the Allison earlier; she didn’t feel the effect of the curse either.”

“Oh.”

Stiles sends a silent thanks to Lydia for being the beautiful goddess that she is because he really doesn’t want to be the idiot that’s going to try and sex up a dangerous—possibly psychopathic, but definitely with trust issues—werewolf. Yes, Derek’s good looking, but he doesn’t have a death wish.

“Stop thinking and go to sleep, Stiles,” Derek says, his voice at the softest that Stiles has ever heard it. Derek must be really tired.

“Tomorrow, I’ll help look for a solution,” he promises.

“Tomorrow, you have school.”

“Shh, I’m trying to be helpful and supportive here,” Stiles says. “Stop ruining it.”

Derek smiles, a show of really white teeth that belongs in a toothpaste commercial because jeez, his teeth are straight and pearly white and Stiles does his best to suppress a shiver as his mind briefly betrays him to think about how incredibly amazing it’d be to feel them nipping a trail down his chest.

Oh god. Maybe he’s not immune after all.

==

There’s a rush of movement that jars him from sleep and he opens his eyes blearily to note that it’s still dark outside. He hears the creak of his door opening before he sees it and oh, shit, that’s his dad checking in on him and—

Derek!

“Dad!” he says, bolting up right just as the door opens. Of course, his dad isn’t looking at him, but at Derek who’s trying to escape through the window. “Oh, hell no,” Stiles groans, trying to get out of bed, but his sheets are like vines twisting around him, trapping him onto the bed.

His dad strides over to Derek purposefully, face tense and focused. He grabs one of Derek’s hands, pressing a loud, wet smack on it before getting to his knees. “Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice—”

“No,” Derek says, twisting his hand away, but it’s not said in his usual tone and it almost sounds like a terrified squeak. Stiles just manages to roll out of bed, wrestling his sheets and holy crap, this is the worst night of his life. He’d really rather not have discovered that his dad is a secret Robert Frost fan.

“—from what I’ve tasted of desire—”

Stiles screeches just so he doesn’t have to hear that and yanks his sheets over his dad’s eyes, but somehow, it doesn’t stop him and he continues.

“—I hold with those that favor fire—Wait! Stiles, what are you doing?”

Stiles waves Derek away and Derek doesn’t need to be told twice to get out, disappearing out the window and dashing down the street by the time Stiles’ dad yanks off the sheets.

“Stiles?” his dad asks, staring in confusion at the window and the sheets in his hands. “What was—Was that Derek Hale in your bedroom? Half naked?”

“Uh, yes?” Stiles says. “But I wasn’t the one reciting love poetry at him.”

His dad blanches, but he’s trained his stare at Stiles. “I’ve no idea what came over me then,” he says, “but is there something you’d like to tell me, son? Like why Derek Hale was in your bedroom half naked?”

No, he really does not want to clue in his dad on this, especially since he’s not sure what’s going on yet either. “Yeah, no, it’s a long story, he was not here on a booty call, but jeez, dad! I swear, if you pretend this never happened, I will never bring up your love poetry recitation to Derek. Ever.” Let the memory die and burn in a fiery pit of lava. Christ, was that how his dad got his mom to date him? Cheesy love poetry? Eurgh.

His dad’s cheeks turn slightly pink and oh god, Stiles just really wants this night to be over.

“Agreed,” his dad says, backtracking out of the room, shutting the door behind him. Then, he calls out: “You’re underage.”

“Nothing sexy happened unless you count reciting love poetry!”

That silences his dad and sends him off to his own room. Stiles pretty much just wants to die and bleach his mind. He stares at his open window and figures that since Derek’s left all his stuff here, he’d be back.

Well, if Stiles just had to live through that horrifying moment in Derek’s shoes, he wouldn’t be back immediately either.

==

School is dreadfully dull in the morning and Stiles can’t keep his eyes open through half of his classes. Derek had sheepishly crawled back in just as the predawn light lit the sky and Stiles had still been awake, trying to induce sudden amnesia in his brain. Neither of them spoke or looked at each other in the eyes.

The moment the school bell rings to signal the end of boredom on earth, Stiles races to his Jeep and almost recoils in surprise when he finds Derek loitering in the backseat.

“Dude! What if someone saw you?” Stiles hisses, slamming the door to his Jeep shut and casting suspicious glances around the parking lot. Students are too busy trying to obstruct traffic with jaywalking and drivers are too busy trying to avoid a lawsuit. There’s still many people milling about and people have eyes, regardless of tinted windows or not. His Jeep, however, does not have tinted windows at all.

“It’s fine,” Derek grunts. “No one’s noticed me.”

“Yet,” Stiles trills as he carefully starts up his Jeep and backing out. “Like, what if Chris Argent walks by and sees you? Oh man, I will never get that image out of my head, kill me now. After what happened last night, I’m surprised you haven’t combusted of shame. You’re determined to get hit on by all the silver foxes in town, aren’t you.”

“Don’t remind me. Drive.”

He catches Allison and Scott heading off and he gives them an enthusiastic wave, nod, and wink. He knows what they’re up to; Scott is not subtle at all and that stupid lovesick face says volumes about what they’ve been doing. Stiles, frankly, doesn’t want to know, but because of their super bro telepathic connection, he knows whether he wants to or not.

He drives directly out into the forest where the old Hale estate stands in a burnt heap. It’s creepy as hell and Stiles may have admitted that out loud very many times, he’s never going to mention it directly to Derek, although he’s fairly certain that Derek already knows how he feels about it.

“Do we need to talk about how your face really can’t be seen in public right now? It’s attracting all the creeps and pedophiles from all over. I swear that Beacon Hills is like the new Hellmouth.”

“There’s no such thing as a Hellmouth,” Derek comments. He slides out of the car before Stiles has even parked and he’s moving towards his old home the moment his feet touches the ground.

“Hey, wait a minute!” Stiles says, killing the engine and rushing out after Derek. “Do you even know what a Hellmouth is?”

Derek doesn’t say anything, but Stiles catches a glimpse of a smile. The guy’s as unpredictable as a bag of cats, sometimes in the good way and sometimes maybe in the bad way. Unpredictable is definitely one of Derek’s character traits.

Derek silently sits down on the steps of the front porch and Stiles follows suit, watching as Derek opens up a map of the surrounding area of the Hale lands. He sweeps a large hand over the paper, flattening it against his knee and Stiles gulps down a large lungful of air, nearly choking. Derek just gives him an unimpressed stare.

“The only place left is the eastern most borders and beyond,” Derek says, gesturing to the paper. “I haven’t checked those places yet.”

“Oh, adventure time. We’re searching for very distant lands. Did you go look at the place where we went through first?” Stiles asks and gets a glare in return. “Okay, just asking, no need to get vicious like a chihuahua, Sour Wolf.”

“I am not a—Forget it, let’s go,” Derek snarls, grabbing Stiles by the back of his hoodie and marching off into the forest. “I am blaming you and Scott for this. Completely. If I have to live with this stupid love spell any longer, I’m going to hurt someone.”

Stiles stumbles on his feet, but manages to catch himself before he faceplants into the dirt. “Love spell? How do you know it’s a love spell? It seems more like a…oh, yeah, I guess you could say it’s a love spell. It’s a weird love spell though, if all it does is attract people that aren’t, um, loyal.” Stop thinking about Derek’s hands; think of Lydia, think of Lydia, think of Lydia.

Derek doesn’t say anything, continuing to walk on with a sense of solitary burden.

“My god,” Stiles mutters. “Straighten up your back and stop pretending you’re here alone. Can’t you hear me walking next to you?”

Derek quirks an eyebrow at him, though he straightens his back. He doesn’t say anything though, and that seems to set the pace for the rest of the time they’re out searching for the entrance to faerieland; a strange silence that’s broken by intermittent blabbering from Stiles and little motions that lets him know that Derek is listening.

==

The search is futile, of course. That seems to be the driving force of Stiles’ life: futility. They go home when it gets late, the air turning chill and Stiles getting hungry because they’ve skipped dinner to comb through every last bit of ground that they can. The faeries must have been really mad, since there’s no portal anywhere to be seen and Derek can’t sniff any of them out.

“Well, maybe there’s a way to undo it without going to the faeries for help,” Stiles suggests to Derek after they’ve eaten and taken their respective turns in the shower. Derek is sitting in sweatpants on Stiles’ bed, idly twisting a rubik’s cube in his hands. He had forgone wearing shirts and is sitting top-nude and wrecking holes into Stiles’ loyal love to Lydia. Derek doesn’t say anything in response, but he continues to twist away at the cube, swapping a red corner for a white, and man, the dude doesn’t know how to solve a rubrik’s cube because that wasn’t the correct move.

“Give that here,” Stiles says, extending a hand in impatience. “It’s like watching Schindler’s List; super depressing to watch a man struggle to do a good thing.”

Derek raises an eyebrow and then hands the cube over, which Stiles solves deftly in under a minute. He hands it back and continues his first train of thought; “We should probably figure out what the point of this spell is. I mean, the faerie king said something about taking responsibility, right? So he wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t have some lesson he wanted you to learn in mind.”

Derek gives him a pointed look.

“Okay, so you did it to save me from being trapped in faerieland forever—thanks for that, by the way—but still! Think! Why would the faerie king put you under a love spell?”

Derek’s shoulders slump slightly at the question. “Faeries are known to be…mischievous creatures. They like creating havoc.” The words are strained, quiet.

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Stiles says. “I’m not stupid.”

Derek huffs. “There’s a lot of things that I don’t tell you.”

“Yeah, but you need my help on this now. I mean, look at you and that rubrik’s cube! Not that you wouldn’t have solved it, I’m sure,” he adds hastily at Derek’s menacing growl. “You could either tell me something to help me along the path of thinking, or I can just figure it out on my own. It shouldn’t be that hard. I have a brain for a reason.”

What he gets in return is silence. Derek’s been quiet the whole day—uncharacteristically silent, almost. It’s not the ‘I’m brooding and angsting about my terrible, terrible past,’ it’s the quietness of reflection and scrutiny of oneself. Stiles is almost intimate with that kind of silence; his dad would go through it from time to time, mostly around the anniversary of his mom’s death.

“I don’t know enough to say,” Derek says cautiously. “But when I confirm it, I’ll tell you.”

He’s staring at Stiles with an intensity that makes Stiles want to crawl out of his skin, makes him want to not just be sitting there at his desk, but to do something. Anything to take that gaze off of him. He can literally feel the heat climbing up his cheeks and into his face and damn it, this is all the stupid spell’s fault.

“Okay, okay, I’m good with that,” Stiles says, throwing up his hands into the air at a play of nonchalance. “Now get out of my bed so I can sleep in it.”

==

Stiles considers it a win that his dad doesn’t open the door to check on him. Derek’s sound asleep, breathing even and quiet in the room. He feels like such a creeper watching Derek sleep, but it’s a weirdly calming activity.

“Good night,” he whispers into his pillow and drifts off to sleep.


End file.
